By: Kirby Paulson
Sydney Rossman earned her league-leading fifth shutout of the year Friday afternoon as the Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team tied Boston College 0-0 in a game that required an overtime frame.
Rossman stopped 38 shots and faced a Boston College offense that was aggressive in their shot taking.
“It kind of keeps me in it a bit, I mean we’re usually a team that doesn’t give up a bunch of shots,” Rossman said. “But when we do, I’d like the team to think that I can be there for them and teach me the game and it’s a good way to keep my team fired up so they can go get the next one.”
Boston College goalie Katie Burt also earned a shutout; her first of the season. The Eagles effectively closed off six player advantages and Burt highlighted her ability to stop secondary scoring chances and credited her penalty kill to much of tonight’s success.
“The penalty kill was huge today, I’m just trying to give our players a chance to play the puck and really get rid of those second chance opportunities, those are usually the pucks that go in,” Burt said. “I thought our penalty kill did a really good job of keeping all the shots to the outside. I think Quinnipiac didn’t really get that many high quality scoring opportunities when we were on the penalty kill, so that was huge for us.”
Much of the game was defined by those penalties and player advantages experienced by both teams. Collectively the two squads amounted 20 total penalty minutes, eight of which belonged to the Bobcats. However, Quinnipiac was also able to effectively kill off the four penalties they were handed.
Quinnipiac head coach Cassandra Turner accredited her team’s effort in practice to the success of the penalty kill.
“I have to give a lot of credit to our team in practice,” Turner said. “We do as much as we can to help prepare and scout power play to know little things about the opponent’s power play and to have them perform that, they take it seriously and I think it shows in games and I think it’s one of the reasons our penalty kill has been so successful.”
Moving forward into the next game, Turner preached composure and confidence as the small key to improvement.
“I think composure with the puck and really, especially on our breakout they really started to crash hard especially at the end of the game and how are we going to get to pucks quicker, how are we going to make more composed plays, support the puck a little bit better, and even the same thing on offense. To support the puck a little bit better, a little bit quicker and some confidence with the puck,” Turner said. “I think we had it early in the game and BC [Boston College]; they pressured us hard and so I think we started to lose that. That’ll be a big step for us tomorrow.”
Quinnipiac will face Boston College on Saturday in the second tilt of a two game set. Puck drop is scheduled for 3 p.m.
